Soldiers in Berlin march toward Paris, 2 August 1914

Munich’s Odeon Square, August 1, 1914

German war dead,

Battle of the Marne

(published only in France)

Germany launched a

drive on Paris on August 1,

1914

Kaiser Wilhelm II confers with the new heads of the Supreme Army Command, Hindenburg & Ludendorff,

1916/17

“A Warm Lunch for 35¢” (Berlin, 1917):Inflation and food rationing caused strikes

and widespread black marketeering

German troops moving through San Quentin to preparefor the “Ludendorff Offensive” launched on March 21, 1918

American troops disembark at Le Havre, July 12, 1918

German POWs captured in France, April 1918

In October 1918 Ludendorff told the Kaiser to appoint Prince Max of Baden head of a “parliamentary”

government, but Max soon turned to Friedrich Ebert of the SPD

A naval mutiny on November 4/5 caused the Imperial government to collapse: Gustav Noske addresses

revolutionary sailors in Kiel

Philipp Scheidemann (SPD) proclaims Germany a Republic from the balcony of the Reichstag on 9

November 1918

TWO HISTORIC BARGAINS IN NOVEMBER 1918 PROMOTED ALLIANCE AMONG SOCIAL & LIBERAL

DEMOCRATS

1. THE EBERT-GROENER PACT, November 10, 1918:

Wilhelm Groener, chief of staff of the Imperial Army, telephoned Friedrich Ebert from Kassel to pledge the support of the officer corps, in exchange for Ebert’s promise “to take up the struggle against radicalism and Bolshevism.”

2. THE STINNES-LEGIEN AGREEMENT, Nov. 15, 1918:

Hugo Stinnes and a delegation of business leaders agreed to implement the 8-hour day and collective bargaining in every branch of the economy in exchange for a pledge by Carl Legien and trade union leaders to oppose any factory occupations and leave the question of nationalization to a democratically elected National Assembly.

“The National Assembly: Dawn of our Social Republic”(Ebert called for democratic elections in January 1919)

Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg founded the Spartacus League in 1917, proclaimed a “Soviet

Republic” on November 9, 1918, and then founded the German Communist Party.

They embraced Lenin’s slogan, “All power to the Soviets!”

Communist insurgents in Berlin, January 1919

A Free Corps unit sworn to crush the Reds

Some Free Corps soldiers used the swastika as a symbol of Aryan

racial purity; many later joined the SA

They caught and killed Luxemburg and Liebknecht on January 15, 1919

Käthe Kollwitz, “Memorial to Karl Liebknecht”

George Grosz, “Ebert”(1934)

Munich experienced

Communist rule for six weeks in April-May 1919

A Bavarian Heimwehr militia

unit that helped to suppress the Munich Soviet

Republic

In February 1919 the National Assembly convened in the Weimar National Theater, behind Goethe &

Schiller

The first women elected to a German parliament: They helped to write an admirably democratic

constitution

PROBLEMATIC ARTICLES OF THE WEIMAR CONSTITUTION OF 1919

• An awkward mixture of parliamentary and presidential government, with a vaguely defined relationship between the Chancellor (who represented the Reichstag majority) and popularly elected President.

• Proportional representation guaranteed a voice for minorities but encouraged political splintering.

• Plebiscite campaigns enabled radicals to focus public debate on extremist proposals.

• Under Article 48 the President could issue emergency decrees with the force of law and suspend civil liberties.

• A two-thirds majority of the Reichstag could pass an “Enabling Act” to delegate its power to the cabinet.

On the 9th of

November

1919(DNVP)

“The Stab in the Back”

(Nazi magazine cover, 1924)

Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger

(Center):Murdered in August

1921

Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau (DDP):

Murdered in June 1922

Militant young nationalists murdered about 500 Germans suspected of collusion with the French from

1919 to 1923